I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture

Title:	I am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture
Author:	Olson, Benjamin Hedge
Description:	Black metal represents one of the most dramatic, violent and obscure representations of contemporary international popular culture; it is an extremist sect of an extremist sect. An understanding of popular culture's most extreme polarities is imperative to an understanding of its range and general character. I will argue that black metal culture is radically different from all other forms of metal and must be understood as a unique form of cultural expression that signifies a dramatic break from both traditional metal and secular modernism. Although black metal has proliferated across the world, taking up certain indigenous variations in its various locations, it has retained three basic characteristics that make it exceptional and significant: 1.) Black Metal is characterized by a conflict between radical individualism and group identity and by an attempt to accept both polarities simultaneously. 2.) Black metal is centered on an extravagantly romantic view of nature and an idealized past, both of these concepts being very much intertwined. 3.) Black metal celebrates the irrational and primal; it is a critique of modern rationalism and secularism.
Permanent Link:	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1206132032 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/15595
Date:	2008

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